11/18/2009

11/16/2009

A customizable cell phone called the xpPhone will be available running the full desktop version of Windows 7 (or Windows XP or DOS). The phone will run on multiple carriers and multiple wireless technologies -- and even using multiple simultaneous SIM cards.

The idea with this phone is that it's a build-to-order device, like a Dell PC. You can choose up to a 7-inch screen, 5 megapixel camera, 120 GB hard drive and up to 64 GB of memory.

The base configuration includes a slide-out key, and a pretty large overall handset size.

The question is: Does the build-to-order model work with cell phones? Shouldn't phones be tightly designed and engineered?

11/13/2009

Google’s Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week, we’ve heard from a reliable source. Google previously said to expect an early version of the OS in the fall.
Check convincing and not so convincing screenshots of Chrome OS over the last several months. The good news is the speculation is about to end, and you can try it out yourself. If you have one of the supported devices, that is.

11/12/2009

In exciting, but not unexpected news, Google has has put its name behind the brainchild of three of their in-house genius programmers. But it's not a web app, nor is it an enterprise solution -- it's not even a downloadable tool like their Chrome browser. They've actually gone and invented a new language. It's called Go. (That's their mascot, the Go-Gopher, over on the right.)

Citing difficulties with existing languages and arbitrary restrictions that prevent them from making the Google services as good as they could be... they did the only really sensible thing they could do: they made their own superior language. To put it into simple terms: imagine trying to communicate with grunts and squeals. That's how Google feels with today's languages, and why they've made their own one. It's why we speak English today, rather than Tarzan Talk.

And in true Google style, they've done it right. Go is fast. It's secure. They even go as far as to call it 'fun' on their homepage!

I don't want to bore you with specifications -- they're all there on their site if you're a developer and want to get going immediately (it's open source, of course!) -- but I will tell you that this is big, big news.

We haven't seen a new systems-oriented language for over a decade. Technology has moved on a lot. Heck, Google themselves have pushed the requirements of computer systems. When you're trying to build a system that scales to hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- of servers, it's no surprise that existing languages don't quite hit the spot.

Say they're only squeezing 40% of the max theoretical output from their server farm. If Go could push that utilization up to 60 or 70%... imagine the gains! For them, for us! This is even good news for the environment!

Of course, it's free to download and use, and there are tutorials that are very easy to get started with. There's even a little video showcasing just how fast it is, after the break.

11/11/2009

Less than two weeks after they released the first beta, Mozilla is back with Firefox 3.6 beta 2. This release includes over 190 bug fixes from beta 1, in addition to the already existing performance boosts and support for one-click themes.

Again, this is a beta release, so only upgrade if you're an early adopter willing to deal with some potential bugs. That said, if you've been using 3.6 over the last week or so, let's hear how you've liked it so far in the comments.

Much has been made of this new feature, and it certainly will make it easier for users to get straight to a song they're looking for, but it's not something we're getting all that excited about. We'll admit that finding and playing back a song when all you've done is search for lyrics is kind of cool. Still, Google already puts video results from YouTube in the search results page, and more often than not they're what you're looking for, anyway.

Right now we're not seeing the updates in our results, but chances are you'll start seeing them in the next day or so if you aren't already.

Mozilla just released a small security update for Firefox, bringing the 'fox to version 3.5.4. Like most of these updates, you're mostly looking at security issues and a few stability improvements. (You can read through the full changelog here. On the Mac, I was pretty keen to see the "slow script dialog appears while print dialogs are open" fix, since it's an annoyance I'd dealt with.) You should automatically be prompted to upgrade sometime in the next day or so, but if you don't feel like waiting, you can also go ahead and grab the latest yourself here. [Mozilla Developer Center]

10/01/2009

According to the official Google blog, 100,000 invitations to Google's most hotly-anticipated new service, Google Wave, are going out today. Wave is being touted as a communication tool that reimagines the way email should work. So, who's getting invited to use this next-generation communication tool? Well, it helps if you signed up early for an invitation and wrote the Wave team a message offering to give feedback. If you're a developer who's been using the developer preview of Wave, you might also get an invitation, and some are going out to paying customers of Google Apps. In their blog post, the Google Wave folks stress that - if you do land an invitation - you're not going to be playing with a finished product. Wave is still missing some crucial features, and bugs are going to be par for the course until the team starts using the feedback from these 100,000 new users to start identifying problems. Unfortunately, you won't be able to directly invite friends to Wave, but you will be able to nominate them for invitations. Do you have a Wave invitation yet? What do you think of the service so far?

Google's Apps Status Dashboard states that an update will be issued by 8:29 Pacific time with more details, and reminds us that Gmail can still be accessed by IMAP clients, as it was the last time this happened. Best option is to enable IMAP to access Gmail during outage - Google's step-by-step instructions.